1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a layout print system, a method for viewing a layout document and a computer-readable storage medium storing a program for causing a computer to execute the method for viewing a layout document.
2. Description of the Related Art
Paper-based business documents are increasingly being replaced by electronic or digital documents in view of increased work efficiency. More digital business documents are being used in business now than before; however, there are still numerous paper-based business documents handled in clerical work processes.
The paper-based processes in clerical work are generally cumbersome. For example, the paper-based documents may be grouped and clipped together with paper clips so that the documents are kept in serial order, and not separated or lost. However, the paper-based documents filed in serial order may need shuffling numerous times to compare some pages with others. The fewer the number of pages of the paper-based documents are, the less cumbersome the clerical work processes will be, thereby increasing work efficiency. Fewer pages of the paper-based documents may also result in ecologically friendly businesses. Thus, a technology in which the paper-based documents are combined and arranged in one page or fewer than the number of pages originally received to facilitate viewing the contents of the documents is much desired for increasing work efficiency with paper-based business documents.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2006-48532 discloses a technology in which plurality paper-based documents are combined and arranged on one page to facilitate their viewing. With this technology, since a user determines a priority order for the arrangement of the documents, the user can adjust sizes of the documents arranged on the page based on the priority order.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2005-18399 discloses a technology in which multiple pages are combined and printed on one or fewer than the number of pages of the documents originally received. In this technology, portions of the documents with protruding the print regions are combined with the documents having large margins so that sizes of the documents combined and printed are adequately adjusted on one page or as few pages as possible.
However, it is still not satisfactory to streamline the handling of the paper-based documents in clerical work processes with such disclosed technologies and other similar technologies. In the technology disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2006-48532, the documents with contents that the user thinks are important are provided with greater weight values than those given to other documents. Those documents with the greater weight values are printed with larger sizes on a printing medium, thereby exhibiting excellent viewability for the user. However, the contents of the documents with less weight values are printed too small to be seen or read, thereby disturbing the efficient clerical work processes. In addition, in this technology, the user needs to provide the weight values of the documents which also results in lowering work efficiency. In the technology disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2005-18399, the portions of the documents with protruding print regions are combined with the documents having large margins so that the sizes of the documents combined and printed are adequately adjusted on one printing medium. However, in this technology, if the number of pages printed on the printing medium is increased, the contents of the documents are printed too small to be seen or read, thereby also disturbing the efficient clerical work processes.
That is, in either of those disclosed technologies, if the documents are combined and printed on one page or fewer than the number of pages of the documents originally received, some of the contents of the documents are too small to be seen or read. In such cases, the user has to go back to the original documents to clarify their contents, thereby drastically lowering the work efficiency.